


Tasteless

by HiddenLacuna



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen, Humour, John is the reason, Shaggy Dog, sherlock doesn't eat much
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-21
Updated: 2013-10-21
Packaged: 2017-12-30 00:59:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 669
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1012141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HiddenLacuna/pseuds/HiddenLacuna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's a reason Sherlock is so thin, and much of it has to do with John's eating habits.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tasteless

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Interrosand](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Interrosand/gifts).



> Possible trigger warning for eating disorders - that isn't what this is about, but just in case. Sherlock doesn't eat right, but then, we knew that. 
> 
> Nothing but fluff ahead. 
> 
> Thank you SO MUCH to excellent betas LapOtter and TiltedSyllogism, who brought me out from under my raincloud and into the giggling sunshine. And to Luthe, who noticed the little things.

It really was too much. 

If Sherlock ate regularly any more, it would put him right off his food.

Sherlock had just been getting over a nasty parasite picked up from undercooked horsemeat coupled with a bout of rehabitis when Mike introduced him to this strange, solid, fascinatingly broken army doctor, which had meant that his appetite, never very good to begin with, had been nearly nonexistent. A single tomato could serve as dinner. A barley broth soup was a hearty meal causing belt-loosening discomfort. He could go for days without eating, not by choice, but because his body simply wasn’t used to sending him hunger signals any more. It wasn’t good, and it was something he had planned to work on because the body and the brain required proper energy to function, but moving in with John had put paid to his plans for proper prandial provisions.

Sherlock found it difficult to eat, now that John was his flatmate and partner-in-crimesolving.

Jam. Salt. Chutney.

At every meal. Every day. Outside the flat, the man even carried tiny jars of chutney and jam - clearly filched from various hotel continental breakfast buffets - in the pockets of his jacket, and added them to simply everything. And tiny paper packets of salt, for those rare times when salt was not on offer. 

Linguine con Pesce di Mare at Angelo’s. Garnished with jam, salt and chutney.

Chow mein noodles in the Chinese district. Salt, jam and chutney laid out for dipping in tiny delicate ceramic bowls.

Hamburgers from McDonalds, sad and wilted and over-warmed in their disposable cardboard boxes, got the same odd treatment, the jam in sharp-edged plastic packets handed over by dead-eyed youths at the till.

Even (and somewhere in the back kitchen a Cordon Bleu chef wept bitter tears) the Criterion’s revered Grand Marnier Soufflé - now _au chutney, confiture, et sel_.

The salt, Sherlock could understand. Some people liked their food more salty than others did. Perhaps John hadn’t been taught that seasoning food before first tasting it was incredibly insulting to the cook, and thus had fallen into bad habits. Perhaps he was self-medicating a sodium-channel deficiency, which could turn life-threatening if he didn’t consume thirty times the recommended daily allowance of sodium. Perhaps he was iodine-loading against goitres. 

The jam, Sherlock could tolerate. He’d never been much of a fan of sweetened meat in his best appetite days, but he’d seen enough of pomegranate lamb served on couscous with raisins or honey garlic chicken wings on menus to inform him that, on balance as a species, humans sometimes did like sweet with their savoury. As far as Sherlock was concerned, jam belonged in puddings, trifles, and on toast, and that ought to have been the limit of its involvement on the dinner table.

The chutney was beyond the pale. Horrible stuff. To Sherlock, it had always seemed an unholy hybrid of jam and salsa, neither sweet nor sour nor spicy but somehow horribly all flavours at once. He’d tried it once at a garden party thrown by his godmother and had to go have a lie-down in the servants’ quarters for the rest of the afternoon. 

The breaking point came as they stopped for a quick mid-investigation takeaway in Trafalgar Square one afternoon. Watching John squeeze the jam and chutney along the sizzling sausage and then sprinkle it liberally with salt, Sherlock simply couldn’t bear it any longer. He had to know. Had John’s tastebuds been shot off in the war?

“John,” he groaned, swallowing a thick glob of revulsion. “Why must you adulterate every meal? I can barely eat around you. It’s disgusting, the way you add those _things_ to _everything_.”

John looked at him in bafflement. “I’m surprised you’re upset,” he said, chewing around a mouthful of Polish sausage under layers of jam, chutney and salt. “I thought Mike told you the day he let you know I was having trouble finding a roommate.” 

John swallowed and grinned. 

“My army nickname was John ‘Three Condiments’ Watson.”

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not even a little bit sorry. :D


End file.
